Ask Chris

Chris Onstad's Achewood --- which recently resurrected itself with a series of pretty regular weekly updates --- is one of my favorite comics of all time, and part of the reason for that is that pretty much everything that happens in it is really, really weird, to the point where even figuring out a baseline of what constitutes "weird even for Achewood" is darn near impossible. Take, for instance, The Great Outdoor Fight, arguably the high point of the strip. That's a story that involves two cats heading to some lawless farm outside of Bakersfield to battle 3,000 men in a no-holds-barred free-for-all that lasts for three days, and involves rigid rules about army leaders, turkey feasts, and unseen but murderous organizers who threaten to mow down the competitors with Jeeps, all of which somehow gets started when a meth-addicted squirrel tries to borrow $6,000,000 to start a business building genitals for cars. And honestly, that's probably the most straightforward story of the strip's entire run.

Q: Aside from laying groundwork, most Golden Age stuff I've read is not very good. Are there any must-reads from the era? -- @TheKize A: Listen, if you're having trouble getting into Golden Age books, I do not blame you. I've read my fair share of them over the years, and while I definitely think it's worth tracking down some of those early superhero comics if you're looking to broaden your horizons a little bit, I'll be the first to tell you that they can be hard to get into for a variety of reasons --- and as you said, chief among them is the fact that a lot of those old comics are just not very good. Of course, you could say that about pretty much any era of comics and you wouldn't be far off from the truth. More than that, though, I think there's a big barrier that keeps the average reader from getting into those comics, and it has a lot to do with when, how, and why those comics were being made.

A: I'm glad you asked! As a writer, long-term plotting has never really been one of my strong points --- I'm more a student of that Larry Hama "never more than three pages ahead" sort of school --- but as a reader, there's nothing I love more than seeing threads tie together after years of groundwork being laid. It's that Chris Claremont, Walt Simonson style of plotting where seemingly insignificant elements and offhand remarks can suddenly gain importance, and where the same imagery can weave itself in and out of the story to give everything a new meaning. And what Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Val Semeiks did in DC One Million and All-Star Superman is one of the best and most subtle examples of long-term plotting ever. Well. Subtle by superhero comic standards, anyway. It still involves a time-traveling Superman who lives inside the sun.

Q: In light of your recent discussion of Copra, what's the best comic riffing on another comic? -- @davidwynne A: Listen, Dave, if we're honest with each other here, the answer is definitely Batman. He might not have been riffing on a comic, but it's hard to get around the fact that those earliest adventures were just Bill Finger and Bob Kane filing the serial numbers off the Shadow and putting him into a slightly more ridiculous outfit. I mean, the guy even has an autogyro, and if that's not a dead giveaway, I don't knoW what is. But at the same time, Batman only really gets good once he evolves into his own thing. If you're talking about comics that were created with the clear intention of riffing on something else and staying that way for the duration (and I say this knowing there's a whole lot of good riffing in Jack Staff), there's really only one answer: It has to be Supreme.

Q: What does the Bottle City of Kandor mean to you? -- @SpaceCrook A: Never before in the history of this column has there been a question that made me feel like I was about to write an essay for a fifth-grade civics lesson. Level with me here, Crook: If I do really well on this week's column, is there a chance I could win a competition and get to meet the Superman Emergency Squad? Even if I don't have the chance to get a selfie with Van-Zee, though, Kandor makes for a pretty interesting topic. It's one of the only elements of superhero comics I can think of that's interesting and distracting, a source of fun adventure and a constant reminder of failure, a plot point that a universe had to get rid of, and that everyone seemed to want to bring back as soon as they could, all in equal measure. In other words, well, it's complicated.

Q: Who is the best President of the United States in superhero comics? -- @SAWinchell A: Ah yes. It's a Presidential Election year here in the United States, and with politics in the air everywhere you look, the next eight months are probably going to involve a lot of questions about elections, public offices, and other expressions of our American ideals of democracy. For those of you who aren't in America, this might seem like we're drawing things out a little bit, but I can assure you that it's been like this for like a year already. Anyway, to the question! Given how rarely we actually see the President playing a significant role in superhero comics, there are really only a few directions we can go with this. The obvious choices are, of course, Prez Rickard and Beth Ross, the two teenage presidents who have starred in different iterations of Prez, or Calvin Ellis, the Super-President from Earth-23, and if I was up for a bit of political satire, I could try to defend the Lex Luthor administration again. But really, if we want to talk about the best Chief Executive in all of comics, then there's only one real choice: President Maria Funkhouser, from Christopher Hastings' The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.

Q: Why is "Strange Apparitions" the best Batman run? - @IanGonzales A: See what I mean about these questions that include their own answers right there in the premise? I have to say, though: You're not wrong. Of all the great Batman runs that have helped to define the character, the six issues that Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers spent on Detective Comics back in 1978 stand out as one of the all-time greatest. It's intricately crafted, beautifully drawn, and while Englehart's claim that it more-or-less invented the Batman of the Modern Age might seem a little overblown at first glance, it's hard to argue that it's not at least a major part of the foundation of how the Caped Crusader would evolve over the following decade. As for just what makes it so great and why it stands the test of time, it all comes down to how they were able to build on the past while creating something that still feels modern almost 40 years later.

Q: Why is the Justice Society of America of such fundamental importance to the DC Universe? -- @M_Morse A: I've been doing this column for a pretty long time, and almost every week, I get a question like this one, where the question itself assumes a pretty specific premise. Sometimes, they go as far as actually answering the question before the end of the sentence, making my part in the whole thing pretty irrelevant --- like, say, "who is the dreamiest guy and why is it Batman?" --- but sometimes, it's that premise that grabs my attention more than what's actually being asked. All of which is just a longwinded way to say that I'm not sure I can really explain why the JSA is a fundamental part of the DC Universe, because I'm not actually sure that they are.

Q: I've been doing a big Batman read-through and just got to No Man's Land. Why does that story work so well? -- @thealan81 A: When you consider how complicated it was to put together, how long it dominated an entire corner of DC's line, and how just plain weird it was right from the very premise, it's kind of amazing that No Man's Land works at all, let alone that it works well. You're right, though --- of all the Batman crossovers that the '90s brought to us, the one that closed out the decade by leveling Gotham City and building stories around Batman spraypainting a gang tag on ruined buildings to mark his territory is easily the best. But as for why it works, well, there's one reason that's actually pretty simple. It is, for all intents and purposes, post-apocalyptic Batman.

Q: What are the best Die Hard tributes or knockoffs in comics? -- @chudleycannons A: Considering how common it is for action movies to try to re-create the feeling of Die Hard, you'd probably be surprised at how little that actually happens in comics. I mean, it makes sense that it would be that way --- despite starting out life as a novel with the amazing title of Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard is pretty inextricably tied to being an action movie, and it's difficult to recreate what makes it work so well in another medium. The closest thing we'd have to that in comics is the massive number of characters that were created as homages or knockoffs of Superman. But if you're looking for a story that operates on those same principles --- a single hero trapped in a confined space, dealing with limited resources and overwhelming odds --- then there are definitely a few stories that fit the bill.